


i hope you take a piece of me with you

by iniquiticity



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Dinner Spoilers, Self-Hatred, The Cycle of Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:42:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26582347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iniquiticity/pseuds/iniquiticity
Summary: After the doors to the grounds closed, Astrid thought about laying down, right there under the familiar oaks, and not move until she was discovered. She took a breath, focusing on Eadwulf’s presence next to her.
Relationships: Astrid/Eodwulf (Critical Role)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 79





	i hope you take a piece of me with you

**Author's Note:**

> like all fanfiction writers, i will show how much i love a character by writing very, very sad fanfiction capturing her self-hatred and how trapped she is by the cycle of abuse. liked this? be my friend on tumblr at [iniquiticity](http://iniquiticity.tumblr.com), or twitter at [@iniquiticity](https://twitter.com/iniquiticity)

After the doors to the grounds closed, Astrid thought about laying down, right there under the familiar oaks, and not move until she was discovered. She took a breath, focusing on Eadwulf’s presence next to her. The ghost of Bren. Caleb. 

They had met previously in her house, yes, but that… it had been all evaluating, all testing the water. Maybe too personal? Bren - Caleb had thought it was important, about their families. He didn’t know anything. She’d suffer for the misstep, she was sure. _He’ll die eventually_ , she thought, for the thousandth time. 

The telltale soft _whump_ of magic, and Eadwulf was offering his flask again. She took it and let herself feel nothing but the junipery burn of the gin in her throat. 

“Can’t say I saw that coming,” he said, and she took another swig. Better, now that it was just the two of them and the oaks. These trees held many, many of her secrets. She handed the flask back and took a breath, settling. Eadwulf needed her. She needed her. 

Caleb, she thought, did not need her. 

Eadwulf again. “You think he’ll…” he glanced back towards the tower. 

She was always the better one at reading Ikithon’s moods, and she was rarely more certain there was a punishment coming, probably sooner rather than later. 

“He’d rather we come when he calls,” she said. Their master enjoyed that, that they dropped everything to attend to him. When they dropped everything to submit to whatever his will was. Especially when it was personal, when it was against them. Sometimes she woke up and felt that powerful, confident surge of knowing this was exactly where she should be, who she should be, what she should be. Sometimes she felt the leash choking around her neck.

She knew the noise of acknowledgement Eadwulf made. A rush of appreciation for him. “Not even Da’leth makes him make that face.” She didn’t need to express how grateful his voice made her. Filling up the space where Caleb had thought that they could just - _leave_. Where there the tiefling had touched her, like they could be friends. “And said it was a gift.” 

She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d seen Ikithon look like that. It would be their fault, of course. It always was. She could have redirected the conversation differently. She could have kept Bren - Caleb - from speaking. She could have not been, at that moment, so weak. It had all been weakness, there, then, she thought. A cold, familiar rush of loathing surged through her.

She would accept the punishment and the blame, of course - she always did. Had she been stronger - had she seen them as her enemies, because they were, they were just too stupid to know it - the whole thing would have gone differently. What had she been thinking, to presume otherwise? To think Caleb would have not _exposed_ her, and himself. Ikithon had warned her, of course - warned both of them that they should not believe anything these people say. That they could come with imaginative poisons, as imaginative as hers always were.

It was hard to swallow the thought that Bren was her enemy. He wasn’t, she decided. Caleb was her enemy. Bren would have never done any of those things, said those words, had such friends. Caleb, however…

She shook it off. Tomorrow would just be another day, Bren or no Bren or Caleb or no Caleb. There was plenty of work. She was expecting any day to be assigned to pick up Xhorhas where Emilia had failed. For now there was just Eadwulf and a chill breeze and oaks and the steak in her stomach warmed with gin.

“Wall’s End?” she asked, but it wasn’t really a question, with their feet already moving. The emptiness of it due to fact it was a front for some suude dealers, the convenience of being able to acquire suude easily when they needed it, and the fact that it was just outside the wall made it a perfect place to spend time. The thought of going back to her house gave her a swell of nausea; the narrow walls often felt like Ikithon was listening. 

A flick of her fingers and she faded into invisibility, and Eadwulf did too, after a moment. She didn’t need to see him to know where he was. She could feel the weight of his presence, the comfort of it. 

Luckily, Wall’s End was the worst in all the worst ways - not even the worst in a way that attracted a specific type of person - and as such no one else was there when they faded back into visibility. A glance to the bartender, the same half-blind, one-armed half-elf - sleeping, she noted. She sat in the corner in the back table facing the door, and Eadwulf sat next to her, immediately wrapping one broad arm around her shoulders. Sometimes - now more than ever - this felt like the only safe place. _He’ll die eventually_ , she reminded herself. She grit her teeth, felt the familiar anger. If she was strong enough he would already be dead. 

Ikithon knew just how far away that _if_ was. He threw it in her face enough. She felt it drip down her spine like sludge. 

Eadwulf kissed the top of her head. A long time ago she had resented his size, had wished she was a head taller and weighed two of herself. These days she acknowledged it’s uses. How much they underestimated her. 

“That halfling took my seat,” Eadwulf said, thoughtfully. The broad brush of his voice shook her from the thought, resettled her mind back on tonight.

“You didn’t have to have to sit next to him,” she said. The thought of not sitting next to Ikithon was terrifying. She knew the looks he gave to anyone else who sat at the table. They were different, from the looks he reserved for her and for Eadwulf.

“No,” Eadwulf replied, “But also, I didn’t sit next to him.” 

Eadwulf knew. No one knew like Wulf. She took another deep breath, let the stale, sour air fill her lungs. She still fit in his hold. 

“Do you think the firbolg actually thought you didn’t know what a firbolg was?” she asked. 

“I honestly don’t know,” A beat. “But he was a _vegetarian_. Can you imagine?” 

“I don’t think I can.” 

She felt the deep rumble of his chuckle in his chest from where she was pressed against his side. It let her muscles relax a little from the tension. “Bren has good friends.” 

“Caleb.” Her voice surprised her. 

“Mm?” 

She had to crane her neck to look up at Eadwulf. Nice, that when she looked at him he took up most of her vision. The square of his face and his shoulder. The familiar, dark line of the leather cord that held the raven pendant he had picked up in the past couple of years. She had gone with him a few times, even prayed. Something about it felt uncomfortable and hollow, to her; she brushed away the rush of cold jealousy from the way he looked at peace, in those moments. 

She gathered her voice back to her. Her voice. Not permitted to make such outbursts, but here she was. The man at the dinner had all at once seemed like Bren and couldn’t have been. Bren never could have said, done, permitted himself to act in such a way. Bren would have accepted the challenge of succession. He would have never been so seditious. He understood loyalty and power, not like Caleb. 

She said, “If Ikithon calls him Bren and his friends call him Caleb, I want to call him Caleb.” 

Eadwulf looked at her. Could tell, she was sure, that she thought something other than what she said. But that was how it was, with power, with truth. “Caleb,” he said. 

“He does have good friends,” she agreed, after. What lies had the Expositor told him, to sit there? What truth had she spoonfed him? The thought of the Soul worming it’s way into his life made her stomach turn over. 

She needed to sleep. In the morning the world would be clear again. It always was. She was weak, that she didn’t actually just get up and tell Eadwulf they should go home. Wulf would’ve had listened, looked at her in his way and wished her a good night’s rest. She stayed here instead, in the back of their deeply unpleasant and empty bar, with his body around hers. She could feel the faint hum of the residuum under his skin, of the conduits that he channeled it through. The strength of his muscles and the rhythm of his heart, easy in his chest. She let her eyes close. 

“Why did the tiefling talk about your hair?” he asked, after a while. 

“She was intending to be cruel,” she replied. How familiar it had seemed, for just a moment, when she had first come to the Academy and all the other children had been rich and beautiful and tall and strong and here she was, hair kept short so it wouldn’t get in her way if she was needed in the fields, and even then she never had been - too small. She’d surpassed every one of those idiot children and the awful farmtown and had confidence in some potential effortlessness of stepping over this tiefling who thought -- what? That they could be friends? 

What a fool.

She thought about the firbolg looking at Ikithon and calling him the same.

“That’s…..weird,” Eadwulf said. 

“It’s a thing you do, when you’re a spoiled girlchild, and you want to hurt another girl. You compliment their hair, but you actually are saying it’s terrible.” 

There was a pause. “He complimented my form yesterday.” 

“Your form was perfect.” 

“I know.” 

Another while. She wondered what the punishment would be, for what Caleb had said about her. Would there be two punishments, one for Caleb and one for the firbolg? Or would it be something creatively combined? She thought about work, about the rebel sect - Moonweaver worshippers - she had been pursuing up north, before Ikithon had called her back here. Trails would be colder now; she would have to be twice as strong to uncover those roots. Maybe that would be abandoned and she would go back to Xhorhas and pursue the drow instead. She could find out exactly how Caleb had become involved with the Dynasty on the side. 

Finally she gathered her strength. “We should rest.” 

“That’s probably true.” 

Her side felt cold as she separated from Eadwulf. It was nice to be invisible again, even if people tended not to look at her, anyway. Back through the Academy grounds and to their houses. Eadwulf’s was like hers. 

Eadwulf bent to kiss the top of her head again in front of his house. Of course, he knew exactly where she was. 

“Good night,” he said, and she saw the door open and close. Only a few more houses until hers. A wave of her hand to dispel the locks on the door, through the foyer to the bedroom, taking the clothes off that Ikithon had suggested and hanging them neatly, then putting on a loose nightshirt and some sleeping pants. She laid on her bed and looked at the ceiling, thinking about the tiefling touching her ever-so-casually. What had Caleb told her about their schooling? She had said _I know some things._ She had said _Caleb likes you, so you can’t be all bad._

She closed her eyes. She had a strategy for getting herself to sleep, where she would focus on each element of her body, each toe, each muscle and tendon, the hum of warm magic, the different pulses of scars, the slight static of the residuum. She usually fell asleep by the throat, and tonight she laid there and went through each chamber of the heart and the bone marrow and folds of her brain and outside the street was quiet and still in her head Caleb was asking them to go to somewhere for _Vess DeRogna_ with him and his friends.

What a fool. How weak must she have looked, that he would ask? 

She was weak. 

She twisted her fingers in familiar patterns. _Wulf, are you awake?_

A stupid question, because she was stupid. You only made the mistake not to wake when you were Sent once, when you served Master Ikithon. 

_Come over if you want, you know the passcode._ he replied. 

She threw on a dark dress that came to the mid-knee and some boots. The air was cold on her skin. It was wonderfully electrifying, and when she took a deep breath she felt the little needles of cold in her mouth, down her throat and through her lungs. A strange temptation, to just stand here and let the cold take her, rose up in a corner of her mind. A beat, two, three, and then she kept walking. She waved her fingers at his door and it opened. 

Upstairs Eadwulf was still awake, though he had changed into a long nightgown. There was the soft smell of incense, and the sticks on the desk he sat at shed dim light over a map of Zadash and some papers - letters or reports, perhaps - that he was studying.

“What are you working on?” she asked, coming to stand next to him. 

Eadwulf’s eyes found hers, and he looked up. She suppressed the shiver, thinking about Ikithon’s gaze, his touch. Despite their best efforts, they had never been able to figure out whether he watched them in their houses or not. She found she believed it more than Eadwulf did.

Nonetheless, Eadwulf touched a small onyx raven he kept on his desk, then looked at her. “I wonder if Caleb was involved in stealing the Luxon Beacon from Zadash. We only saw two drow at the Zauber Spire, but obviously someone else took it and returned it to the Dynasty. Then Bren’s Cobalt Soul friend knows we have a second. The way he touched the beacon in the laboratory - he’d done so before. I don’t know what to do with it."

She gasped. Her fingers clenched on the desk, next to him, and he frowned. 

Slowly, she moved to sit on his bed, rolling it over in her mind. If he had been - it was treason of the highest order. Without a doubt her enemy and a future assignment. Her chest tightened.

What a battle it would be, to have to capture Caleb and his friends. They were obviously very capable. It would come down to her and Caleb, of course. Didn’t they used to have dreams about this, when he was Bren? 

_Race you to the top,_ she’d said, to Caleb. Only here she was challenging him because he was a Dynasty agent. An ally to their greatest enemy. Not even a rebel or insurgent. Just a plain-old drow kisser. 

She took a breath. Eadwulf snuffed out the little ember at the end of the incense and sat next to her. 

“You can’t find out,” she replied. Her voice didn’t sound like she meant it to. Too quick, a tremble. This time, more even. “You know what to do, if he is.” 

Eadwulf sighed. His square form bowed. “You’re right.” He reached out and took her hand in his, intwining their fingers. He had a scar along his index finger from a near-miss from a blade trap from an enemy spellbook. It felt good, when he squeezed. 

She twisted her body to wrap her other hand around Eadwulf’s neck, so he would bend and she could kiss him. His other arm went around her waist soon enough, calloused fingers finding her skin. What a relief, to kiss Eadwulf. That wasn’t thinking about the beacon, or Bren, or Caleb, or his friends the firbolg and the expositor and the tiefling. That wasn’t thinking about the prior mission and the prior punishment or the next mission and the next punishment. It wasn’t thinking about the dinner. 

She was strong. She pushed him back into the bed, discarding the nightgown and her clothes and boots. She bit at his mouth and he ran his hands over her body. She knew he liked touching her scars, the texture change where the skin went from dead and firm to lively and soft. He had a favorite - the one where a lightening bolt had struck her in the shoulder and left a small web of lines. He stayed away from the old lashes Ikithon had delivered through every imaginable intermediary, including both of them. 

She was strong. She let him slip inside her and rolled her body and listened to the moans he made. 

The thought of them - the firbolg, the tiefling, Caleb - didn’t leave her alone, when she lay after, with an arm slung over Eadwulf. She watched the soft rise and fall of his chest. Listened to his breathing. He was strong. She was, too. 

She wasn't. She knew, because she asked, “What if he’s right?” 

“He’s always right,” Eadwulf murmured, without opening his eyes. He turned and wrapped his arms around her, swallowing her up. His skin was warm and slightly damp with sweat against her. Familiar. 

If she was stronger maybe she wouldn’t have clarified, because it was true. 

Then she said, “No. Not him. The firbolg.” Here, Eadwulf opened his eyes and looked at her, the low, low light of the room swallowing up all the detail in his face. He was just his square silhouette and dark hair and warm arms. “What if pain --” Too weak. She couldn't say it. “What if the firblog is right?” 

It sounded so stupid. She buried her face in his chest and bit the inside of her mouth. The pain was shocky and solid. Perfect. 

Eadwulf’s fingers were tracing along the lightening scar on her shoulder. The other hand was moving with rhythmic calm up and down her back. The rise and fall of his chest forced her heart to beat in time with it. 

“You’re still the strongest woman I know,” he said into her hair, with a kiss there. “And I will mourn you very much.”


End file.
